Quiet Neighbors

by Catriona McPherson

  And if the friend, stung, lobbed another one—“So you just put up with it? I wouldn’t.”—Jude had the perfect put-down. “No one gets everything,” she’d say, and then she’d watch the woman grow thoughtful, realising what she’d missed, what she’d settled for. And Jude would hate herself and wonder why she didn’t nag and shout, sneer at his stains and stumbles instead of turning it out on everyone else.

  That was when she’d tried to persuade him. They made deals. He made promises. She wiped the slate clean and waited, and then they made deals again.

  Eventually, she gave up. She was too busy to be out there watching Max lurch towards the toilets, green and weaving. She had her job and she had the flat to look after. He drank and she cleaned. She bought a wallpaper nozzle for the Hoover, a fringe comb for the rugs, a wire tidy for the cables in the entertainment system. She learned how to dismantle a keyboard to clean it, from a YouTube video, how to freshen trainers with cat litter and degrease burners with vinegar and mouthwash.

  Then he stopped. That was the bit she hadn’t told Lowell and Eddy. She didn’t ask him why. She didn’t talk about him stopping any more than she’d talked about him drinking. She just quietly took the credit for playing it well and getting what she wanted in the end. It wasn’t until the last night—

  Jude caught herself. That was the first “last night.” The night she thought might be the worst night of her life until the real worst night came along.

  The book she was holding slipped from her hands and she sat back on her heels as a brand-new thought slotted neatly into a space in her brain she hadn’t realised was there: even now, she hadn’t had the worst night of her life. The night she had given that name to was just the first step to the big one that was coming.

  She picked up the book again and shelved it. Lowell’s distress at the shifting of his military biography had spurred her on to finish the section. At least they all had prices already, since he found Biography more worthwhile than Fiction. He wasn’t going to be happy with her work though; she knew that already.

  “How are you doing it?” he’d said. “Subject area? Century?”

  “Subject area?” Jude echoed. “It’s Biography.”

  “Yes, but … Military, political, royal, theatrical … ?”

  “Alphabetically by surname,” said Jude.

  “But how would a man find, say, all the biographies of the Boer war?”

  “Google it. Or I can put colour-coded spots on the bottoms of the spines.”

  “Colour-co—” said Lowell. “Why not handcuffs and love hearts? Why not have carousels and two-for-ones? Why not sell coffee?”

  “Libraries don’t sell coffee,” Jude said. “It was libraries you were scoffing at, wasn’t it?”

  He might change his mind when he saw the neat shelves and started noticing all the sales he was ringing up, once people could find what they were looking for. Although Jude knew from Saturdays in a supermarket when she was a kid that you weren’t supposed to make things too easy to find. You were supposed to make the ambience so appealing they’d want to stay, find what they were looking for and a whole load extra; more expensive, if you were lucky.

  Browse appeal, she thought, looking round. Pick the right one to go face out in the space at the end of the row: Simon Weston, Paul O’Grady, Winston Churchill, that kind of thing. Then encourage people to linger. She had seen the perfect encouragement in the window of the charity shop as she’d walked to work that morning. A green velvet armchair and beside it a tiny octagonal mahogany table with a Tiffany lamp on top. It had made her think of T. Jolly’s chair upstairs in her cottage. Reading perfection. She had barely sat on the rust-red sofa in the living room at all.

  Assuming it was velour, veneer, and Tiffany-style, she thought, she could probably scoop the lot with petty cash and surprise him. She finished picking off another of the ubiquitous number stickers and headed downstairs.

  Eddy was sitting at the desk, leafing through an outsize guide to natural childbirth.

  “I should take this round to that doctor’s and shove it up his arse,” she said. “Then tell him he’s got a thousand miles to go to the nearest hospital to get it removed.” She slammed the book shut and spun round on the chair with her head back. When it stopped revolving, she was facing the bank of shallow drawers where Lowell kept his photograph collection. She tugged on a few of the handles then sighed and slumped back.

  “Have you ever seen these?” she said. “He won’t show me.”

  “There’s no ‘ever’ about it,” said Jude. “I’ve only been here a week.” Eddy sighed louder. “And no. He’s pretty possessive about them.”

  “That’s one word,” said Eddy. “They’ve got to be porn, right?” She spun round to face Jude. “Right? Else why’s he so weird?”

  “They could be anything,” Jude said. “Landscapes, wildlife, tall ships. They’re locked away from your grubby hands because they’re valuable.” Eddy was nodding. Slow, sarcastic nods. “I’m going out,” said Jude. “And cheer up. There’s bound to be midwives round here. Independent wacky ones. Doulas.”

  “How much would that set me back?” Eddy said.

  “Tell Lowell you’re staying and he’d cough up for a busload,” Jude said.

  “He knows I’m staying,” said Eddy. “Where the hell else’m I going to go?”

  She had no idea of her power, Jude thought, hurrying along the road with her head bent against a halfhearted drizzle. God help Lowell if she ever worked it out.

  Maureen was alone in the charity shop, pressing a suit and ready for company.

  “Stick the kettle on, petal,” she said, leaning down hard on a cloth-covered turn-up. “I must be mad,” she added, peering at Jude through a plume of steam. “No one appreciates it. Not as if some natty gent’s going to buy it to wear with a collar and tie. It’ll be a Goth wearing the jacket covered in badges with the sleeves rolled up and some punk in the trousers with a string vest and red braces.”

  Maureen, thought Jude, hadn’t kept up to date with street tribes, but she was probably right about the natty gent. As she set about making the tea, she flashed on Max in his paramedic’s uniform the day he’d qualified. Then, to take her mind off that, she checked the price tags in the window. £40 for the chair, whose back at least one cat had used as a scratch post; £20 for the table, which had a wedge of paper under one of its three feet to keep it steady; and £5 for the plastic lamp.

  “I’ll give you a round fifty in cash for this lot,” she said.

  “Typical Londoner,” said Maureen. “You know it’s for cancer, don’t you?” Then she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and fanned the neck of her blouse. “Go on then if you’ll wait till closing so’s I don’t have to redo the window. And if you’ll share any news you might have,” she added, just a shade too innocently.

  Jude smiled. “You’ve heard then.”

  “Heard and can’t believe it!” Maureen said, setting the iron on its end and taking the cup Jude offered. She dropped into one of a pair of wicker garden chairs marked nfs and nodded at the other.

  “Where will I start?” Jude said. “Eddy is nineteen. She’s the daughter of Miranda, who used to stay at Lowell’s away back.”

  “Twenty years back probably, eh no?”

  “Good point. Back when Jamaica House was a bit of a bordello.” Maureen raised her eyebrows. “According to Mrs. Hewston anyway.”

  “You need a pound of salt with anything she tells you,” Maureen said. “She’s never recovered from Dr. Glen leaving her. Lowell can do no right.”

  “So what’s the truth?” said Jude, blowing into her cup. Maureen was one of those tea-drinkers with a cast-iron mouth; she was taking great gulps of it already

  “I can’t say for sure,” Maureen said. “Twenty years ago I was busy with my girls and, nosy as I am, I couldn’t spare the time. He did have a sort o
f open house, I suppose you’d say, once the old fella was gone and he got to start living. Had a party or two, had some lads camping on the lawn. Mrs. Hewston nearly blew a gasket. Folk came and they went. But, right enough, there were girl hitchhikers. Dressed like hippies—and this was years too late for real hippies, mind. Now, which one was it?”

  “Miranda,” said Jude. “I told you.”

  “Aye, but which one was she?” said Maureen. “There was a big one, big bushy head of black hair, big red lips, put me in mind of Raquel Welch. And a wee one like a prawn—no colour at all and never said much either.”

  “Miranda was the big one,” Jude said. Amazonian, Lowell had called her. “She sounds terrifying.”

  “A right femme fatale I always thought, even with the cheesecloth and thon clompy shoes. And it would have taken one to get round Lowell.”

  “That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?” Jude said. “I mean, he’s too old for me, but he’s a kind man with a nice house and a job—sort of. Why’s he single?”

  “Oh mighty!” Maureen said. “He’s far too old for you. He’s … now let me see. He was a year behind my brother at the school and Alec’s two years younger than me. And I’m sixty–five, or so the mirror tells me in the morning so … sixty-two he would be.”

  “Twenty years,” Jude said, which didn’t seem so much, really. Only Lowell with his monogrammed hankies was from another time, like the star in a black-and-white war film.

  “And as to why he never married,” Maureen said, “that’s like I was telling you.” Tea finished, she was wresting the lid off the jar of toffees she kept on the counter. When she had one unwrapped and stowed in her cheek, she spoke again. “Of course, we all thought he wasn’t ‘the marrying kind.’ But that was just our ignorance here at the back of beyond. Just because he read books and loved his mother. Well, here we all read books now, since Oprah, and he was close to his mother because it was either her or the doctor.”

  “You’re not one of his fans then,” said Jude.

  “Och, doctors had too much say, in the old days, and nobody saying anything back to them. It would turn anybody’s head in the end. Same as coppers. A clip round the ear and no paperwork.”

  “Mrs. Hewston calls it the good old days. When nursing meant more than—”

  “Reading a screen and wearing pjs, aye,” Maureen said. “That’s her wee catchphrase. Dr. Glen used to smack your arm before he put the needle in. And you only got a lolly if you didn’t cry. Well, I cried because he smacked me and then I cried because I didn’t get a lolly! Then the teacher tanned my arse and I cried more.”

  “The teacher?” said Jude.

  “Small pox jags,” Maureen said. “Dr. G. sat at the front of the class and did thirty of us. Whack! Jab! Whack! Jab!” She laughed and shook her head. “The good old days, my foot. He played a canny hand at the end, mind.”

  Jude gave her an expectant smile, hoping for more, but Maureen looked away.

  “What we were talk—Oh aye! Lowell never married. If that was at the back of it, he’d be ‘out’ now, wouldn’t he? These days we’ve all got a bit more sense in our heads. I mean, look at this Eddy that’s rolled up. When I was a youngster Miranda getting in the family way would have been whispered about, and then the same carry-on with her daughter would be the tin lid. Unless that’s just Mrs. Hewston stirring.” She turned curious eyes on Jude.

  “No, it’s not just Mrs. Hewston,” Jude said, only just managing to follow the thread. “Eddy’s out to here. Which reminds me: she’s not too struck on the current doctor and she’s looking for a private midwife.”

  “Ocht, she’s her mother’s daughter right enough,” Maureen said. “All incense and beansprouts. Aye, you can’t spit in Galloway without hitting a healer of something or other. She’ll not need to look far. And so is her mother with her? Will she be coming to help with the baby?”

  “Oh God,” said Jude. “I can’t believe Mrs. Hewston didn’t tell you this bit! Her mother’s dead. Miranda died. That’s what spurred Eddy on to come and find her father.”

  “Dead,” said Maureen. “That lovely girl with her mane of raven hair?” She had been upgraded out of sympathy, Jude noted.

  “And she only told Eddy about Lowell on her deathbed.”

  “The wee sowel!” Soul Jude thought she meant but it sounded better with two syllables. “And why was that then?”

  Jude thought over all that she’d heard from Lowell and from Eddy herself and shook her head. “I’ve no idea, actually. Miranda was married at one time. Eddy had a stepdad, but he doesn’t sound much cop and they were long divorced when she died.”

  Maureen rocked rhythmically back and forth for a bit, sucking the toffee. It wasn’t a rocking chair, but the wicker was old enough to have some give. “Well,” she said in the end, “maybe she’d had a bad experience with him and it put her off letting another man in on it. Fair play to her. Only, anyone who knows Lowell knows he’s a good man.”

  “But did she know him? If it was a nonstop party that summer?”

  “I see what you mean, but she was here a good while,” Maureen said. “They came for the summer solstice down on the Rhins with all the rest, and usually that lot take off at the first nip of autumn. I mean, it’s never that cold here but you’ve seen for yourself, petal, it’s gey dreich when the rain starts and no stopping. But that pair stayed put and saw the winter through. The wee one like a peeled prawn was at her pictures—rocks, mudflats, never a bonny view; and the big one—that was Miranda you’re saying?—was in the shop huddled over a paraffin stove, reading.”

  “And then they just left? Why?”

  “Well, no one ever knew, did we?” Maureen said. “Just that she went and took her wee pal with her.”

  Jude considered it. When Lowell had talked about Miranda’s last night at Jamaica House, them watching the news together, he hadn’t mentioned anyone else being there.

  “I don’t think they left at the same time though,” Jude said. “I think Miranda stayed on by herself.”

  “Makes sense,” said Maureen. “Maybe her and Lowell only got close when it was down to the two of them. I honestly couldn’t tell you. Wintertime here, you can go weeks without seeing a body. I’m thinking if I want to meet Eddy I’ll need to come round for a rummage. How far on is the lass?”

  “Pretty far,” Jude said. “Eight months.”

  “And how’s she carrying it?” Jude wondered if she was about to hear some old wives’ tale about boy and girl babies sitting differently, or if Maureen was going to offer to swing a pocket watch. But she had misunderstood. “Some bloat and some bloom, and nobody every tells the bloaters they’re not blooming! Like no one ever tells a man he’s married a pig or a tells a woman her baby’s a wee gargoyle.”

  Jude didn’t laugh. The memory had come back like a thrown knife. She met Raminder only once, at the ambulance station’s family day, the charity picnic. She was wearing a sari and gold bangles, with a cascade of warm black hair bouncing against her back as she walked. Jude had spoken to her beside the chocolate fountain. Neither of them liked marshmallows. But Max hadn’t introduced her, and Jude thought she was another wife until they were driving home.

  “Who brought the glam Hindu?” she’d said.

  “Sikh,” Max had told her. “That’s Mindy.”

  “That’s Mindy?” said Jude, amused at first. “Mindy that you’re on call with?”

  She had got the impression that Mindy was a dumpy little frump. Partly it was the name but, as well as that, Max had said she brought food from home instead of eating in the canteen, and he’d said she wore her hair in a …

  “A cake?” Jude had said, laughing at him. “You mean a bun?”

  “Right,” said Max. “A little cake on the top of her head so her baseball cap looks like it’s floating.” And he had laughed too and Jude had thought they were sharing laughter about a
funny-looking woman he worked with, but really Max was laughing because talking about Mindy, even with his wife, made him happy.

  “Why didn’t you introduce me?” she’d asked, driving home from the picnic.

  Max shrugged. “Get enough of her at work.”

  But of course he didn’t get enough of her at work at all. That was a lie. He couldn’t get enough of her without leaving his wife and spending every day and every night with her.

  Everything else he had said was technically true. Her hair and the food and how she lived with her parents and made her own clothes. But Jude had taken the snippets and made a spinster out of them. The reality was Raminder, with her fall of warm black hair wound into a knot under her cap and her hand-stitched saris and salwar kameez and her delicious food brought in to share with the shift because no one would settle for canteen grub again once they’d tasted it. Just about as different from poor Mindy as a woman could be. Jude had looked at herself in the wing mirror the day of the picnic and somewhere deep inside she already knew.

  “Not much time to waste then,” Maureen was saying. “Tell her to ask in Pandora’s. They’ve got a notice board in the back. Aye, you can get everything from breast milk to death spells off the notice board in Pandora’s.”

  “Death spells?” said Jude.

  “Oh God aye,” said Maureen. “The wee minister from the happy clappy church keeps writing letters to have the whole place closed down, but it’s a right laugh for a hen night.”

  “I’ll tell her,” said Jude, still not sure if Maureen was joking.

  “She’ll get a free prescription of birthstones and her own wee star chart. Me, I’d rather have the epidural.”

  Jude shared the good news as soon as she got back.

  “There’s a coven just across the road, apparently,” she told Eddy. “Pandora’s. There’s a notice board where all the voodoo midwives put their phone numbers.”

  “No judgment, eh?” Eddy said.